-Edited to add: this morning (Tuesday, September 20th) several protesters, including members of the Occupy Wall Street media team and Jason Ahmadi of the War Resisters’ League, were arrested — some violently. Reports that some of the protesters are in critical condition have yet to be confirmed.

******

Day three of the encampment at Liberty Plaza, formerly known as Zuccotti park, is coming to a close. A lively group stands at the corner waving cardboard signs to passersby: JOIN US. WE ARE THE 99%. Helium balloons pop up throughout the park, boosting morale and providing helpful markers (“Where are you sleeping?” “Over by the red balloon”). From the other side of the park, where we sit eating some of the $6,000 worth of pizza donated to the protest thus far, we hear a loud stream of honking from Broadway. People jump to their feet, speculating it’s the Hell’s Angels. Rumor has it they are part of the 99%.

10 am: I arrive in the plaza to find five people have already been arrested during a march from Liberty to Wall Street for the opening bell of the Stock Exchange. At around 11:00 am a crowd rushes towards the sidewalk on Broadway chanting “shame!” – police are arresting two people for drawing on the sidewalk with colored chalk. Returning to the scene of the crime Andrea Osborne, one of the chalk offenders, tells me that before she was arrested, one of the NYPD officers told the demonstrators it was okay to draw on the sidewalk.

“I don’t know what they’re trying to do. I think they’re really afraid of us and they’re trying to instill the same fear into us.”

People converge for a General Assembly – one of many that will take place today – to give legal updates and advice. The General Assembly, or GA, is an open, participatory forum through which decisions and announcements for Occupy Wall Street are made and the various working groups responsible for organizing Occupy Wall Street were formed. There is a committee for everything from medical help to direct action; as of today there is also a dumpster-diving committee, and a hygiene committee. The food committee, who on Saturday announced “no-one will go hungry on Wall Street” is concerned about the lack of vegan meal options. Every time I have been hungry, there has been food. Nobody can say we are not organized.

The media committee of the GA announces they’ve been fielding requests about how to respond to reporters asking “what is our one demand?” This question has pervaded the weekly GAs ever since Adbusters first issued the call to Occupy Wall Street back in July. The media committee reminds us that we are all here for our own reasons and no-one can speak for the group, but proposes that anyone interviewed include the following two words in their statement: “join us.” The proposal is passed through consensus demonstrated by raised hands, wiggling fingers, knocking fists.

Seeing my hot pink “Bring Our War Dollars Home” sign, a member of the media team says “hey, CODEPINK! Thanks for the oatmeal!” I’m as surprised by the recognition as I am by her revelation that she has even seen food today; the only stationary presence in the park (with the exception of people sleeping), the media team never seem to stray from their intricately wired laptop hub, except maybe to light cigarettes. I ask her how she knew it was CODEPINK who brought the oatmeal: Twitter, naturally.

Throughout the day I see various people – some familiar, some not – adopting the CODEPINK “Bring Our War Dollars Home” sign and its message. A young man asks if he can hold the sign for awhile. He is part of the 99% who are outraged that our tax dollars are spent killing people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Palestine, while record levels of Americans are living in poverty. I watch as reporters ask members of the Granny Peace Brigade what the sign is about and why they’re here, pointing out that most people demonstrating are a fraction of their age. A Granny throws her fists and face towards the sky shouting with glee: “YES! And thank GOD!”

******

Night falls and I reconvene with The Arts and Culture Committee, who are discussing how to keep momentum and spirits up – hula hoops, radical cheerleaders, music – and the criminality of sidewalk chalk (apparently it’s legal if we clean it up afterwards).

At 9:00 pm the first vegan pizzas arrive. The ever-expanding collection of recycled pizza-box signs covering the sidewalk by the park demand an end to wars, funding for healthcare, bail outs for student debt, jobs, environmental and economic justice, and freedom for Troy Davis and Bradley Manning.

At 9:30 the sound of hundreds of hands clapping from the other side of the park signals the GA is meeting. The message appears on a giant white sheet projected from a digital screen where anyone can send a message to people in the park and post to twitter and other social media.

I send a message to the digital screen: I see beauty all around me. I look around at my brothers and sisters in the A & C committee, weary but alert. For some it is their seventh day of action and the third night spent in the park.
We are tired. We are together. We are here.JOIN US.

Comments

Rob Liverpool u.k

09/20/2011 - 5:05pm

The few of the 1% who are at the protest have 99% of Americas balls,
To the rest of America you send your children abroad to die for oil you let your police crack the skulls of your children at home.
Game over you lost.

I honestly love the idea of GA and "no one can speak for the group", but I think that is why you're not getting widespread support and media attention. Something needs to be said, even if it's very general. There should be a phrase or mission statement or common thing...

i can't make it to NY, but GIVE THEM HELL for me:) We need REAL change in this country and not just a "Catch Phrase" from another Puppet (politician). i pray Psalms 35 and the Blood of Jesus over you all and the movement. God Bless:)

This innovative first step of "Occupying Wall Street" is really just 'a first step' in "The Coming Insurrection" [Negri] or the global revolution "Against Empire" [Parenti]:

Naturally, there is little media coverage by the ruling global corporate/financial/militarist Empire which now controls our former country by hiding behind the facade of its 'bought and owned' TWO-Party modernized "Vichy" sham of faux-democratic government --- just as the Nazi Empire when it was trying to control Europe and the world installed its crude, first-generation, single-party "Vichy" facade of government in Vichy France c. 1940.

What is starting to happen today in this uncoordinated 'Occupy Wall Street' protest in the US, which is the nominal and temporary headquarters of this entirely new scale of post-nation-state global Empire, is the beginning of what could quickly become a Second American (and world) Revolution "Against Empire" [Michael Parenti] --- and that naturally scares the hidden, well disguised, and generally undiagnosed global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE to death --- and thus they (the global Empire) will use all power in their hands; political, media, money, and ultimately military, to crush this nascent, if improperly named revolution "Against Empire"

Are these protests to be taken seriously? Lack of vegan meals? Get a life!!! (I would say, "Get a job," ...but illegal aliens have taken most of them due to socialist/liberal policies regarding our borders.) It is obvious that this blog and related material (videos, etc.) does not take the full context of NYPD arrests into account, nor do the activists writing about and filming such partial events really care about context. Such activists are interpreting everything through the paranoid eyes of conspiracy theory. They need an elaborate excuse for their personal failures. For example, in particular, we are expected to blame the NYPD (who are people too, simply trying to do their job) merely based on the perpetual anti-authority conditioning from our liberal media (who endorses popular opinion simply to gain higher ratings), thus perpetuating the myths of wide spread police brutality and one- world domination. Once again, these protest-related videos are one-sided and are intended to trigger knee-jerk (visceral) reactions without consideration to a broader context, just as we are expected by these socialists to demonize Wall Street in general, based on the uninformed and dramatized view that capitalism (which has hitherto raised the standard of living worldwide) is evil. (Wake up! The movie "Wall Street" was just a movie idiots.) Just as the "historical" context is omitted from these blogs, writings and videos, so too is an authentic historical context obviously omitted from (or distorted in) the minds of these protesters. Does anyone realize that our welfare and social programs (which facilitates dependency and an exponential spread of the entitlement mentality) has more led to the present economic collapse than Wall Street???

Those brave souls, the Occupiers, the 99%, are the voice of sanity and reason in a world and time gone utterly off the deep end. They do what must be done, because to do nothing is not an option. Failure is not an option. The only option is to expose the oppression, lies, thievery and corruption that grows like a malignant tumor, and demand that the tumor be excised. Those people are true patriots, not only to America, but to the world.

There's your hope. There's your change. Join them or get out of the way.